Dark Deeds on the Road to Winterhaven
After defeating Irontooth and his kobolds in their lair, the heroes are ready to spend some of the loot they’ve found before tracking down this nefarious Kalarel. First they sleep for six hours at the kobold lair. Then they interrogate the kobold dragonshield they captured at the end of the last fight, who, upon intimidation, claims the kobolds are “nice, not mean to humans”, and that normally they “only capture nice humans to give to Bloodreavers for trade.” But that Irontooth enslaved them for “mean human with horns that raises the dead from the grave.”
All they can get from the kobold about the Bloodreavers is that these are hobgoblin slave traders. All the kobold seems to know about the human is that his name is Kalarel, and that Kalarel and his “walking dead” was the only thing even Irontooth was scared of. The kobold says the Bloodreavers come from Thunderspire, and that Kalarel dwells in the Shadow Keep with “many goblins.”
The heroes give up on getting any more useful information and decide to head back towards Winterhaven, carrying the kobold prisoner bound and in a sack. On the way back to town, they run across one of the many clumps of farmsteads which they had seen on the way out of Winterhaven a day before. There are three farmhouses here, as well as a slightly larger house apparently used as a wayside church of Avandra, goddess of good luck and safe travel. It is mid-morning, yet not a single soul is in sight, however. There is not even a sound from a single farm animal.
The deathly silence is discomforting and worrisome to the heroes. Rafanel the ranger and Tlaloc the rogue decide to scout ahead of the group and investigate the farmhouses. As they approach the homes, they go by the larger building, and look beyond to the central square between buildings. As they move near the large building, they start to notice the low buzz of a lot of flies swarming about in the otherwise quiet air. Then, as they round the corner of the larger building, the see in the open space between buildings several dead farm animals and a couple of piles of bloody bones, with little swarms of flies hovering above each pile.
But they also notice a foul putrescent stench coming from the windows of the large building they are standing next to. Rafanel looks in a crack of the closed window and sees a dark common room. In the shadows, he spots what looks like a pole which has been erected in the center of the room, where a body hangs. Near the pole on the ground are additional piles of bloody bones of various animals or humans. The air in the dark room is thick with the buzzing of flies. Rafanel tells Tlaloc to go fetch the others while he investigates the inside of the building. He breaks open the door, and as some light enters the now open doorway, he steps inside and perceives the full horror of the scene.
On the wooden pole hangs the corpse of one of the farmers the group saw only a day earlier when passing through to attack the kobold lair. The body, though only a day old, seems oddly dessicated and drained of life, and there are strange runes carved all over the corpse’s skin. It appears the farmer’s throat was slit wide open so that the corpse’s head is barely staying attached to the body. There are more strange runes written in blood all over the walls of the common room, defiling the shrine of Avandra with the foul vileness of this murder. The two piles of bones near the hanging corpse seem to have been carefully arranged, and seem to contain bloody parts of cows and chickens, possibly mixed with a few human parts. The stench in the room is overwhelming.
Just then Tlaloc returns with the others. Some of the heroes remain outside, but Lozol steps inside to view the carnage for himself, trying to use his disgust for what he sees to steel himself to his purpose. As he looks around, Lozol recognizes the symbols on the wall from his own studies of religion, and announces to the others that these symbols are used in the foul worship of Orcus, Demon Prince of the Undead.
Rafanel moves towards the corpse, perhaps thinking to cut it down. But as he approaches, the heroes are horrified to see the corpse’s head raise up to look with dead eyes right at Rafanel. From the corpse’s own dessicated mouth, a low moan utters the formless pain of the dead: “Mmmhhhmmmmhhhhh.”
Then the gash where the corpse’s throat was slit opens up further, shaping itself into a strange fanged mouth, which speaks in a drone-like voice which seems to form out of the buzzing of the flies which swarm about the corpse. “I, Kalarel, have defiled this heretical shrine to the false gods. The fate of the heretics in this roadstop pithole shall be the fate of all in Winterhaven, and the fate of all people in this mortal world. All shall serve the Prince of Blood!”
Rafanel sweeps out his swords and moves up to the corpse, slicing its head off and silencing it before it can speak more blasphemies. But just as the corpse’s head hits the wooden floor of the common room, the heroes hear many pained moans coming from the other smaller buildings. The rest of the group who remained outside the larger building move around the corner to see what new horror is coming their way. They see the doors of the other buildings have opened, and from the doorways are issuing out, one after another, the slow, shambling corpses of the other farmers, men and women alike. Some of the corpses seem relatively fresh, farmers killed only a day ago and sporting bloody cuts and gashes to prove how they died at the hands of their murderers. A few others seem to be weeks or months old, perhaps representing the recent dead family members of the slain farmers, dug up from their nearby graves to trouble the world at Kalarel’s command.
As the zombies shamble closer, the heroes try all they can to see if they can slay the undead before their putrid claws reach them. Lozol, having learned about undead in his religious studies as a paladin, shouts out: “Go for their brains. If you pierce or crush their brains, that will kill them. Otherwise you have to hack them to bits to stop them.” Rafanel looks out from a window of the big house onto the oncoming horde of zombies. He fires his arrows at the two in front, putting Lozol’s instructions to the test He shoots two of the more decrepit looking corpses right in the brain. They both fall limp on the ground. Xandir blasts magic missiles at one of the tougher looking zombies. He manages a one in a million shot, hitting it squarely between the eyes. The zombie’s brains spatter out the back of its head, and it falls limp as well. Lilith rains down fire on a group of zombies. They burn in mindless pain, but continue to shuffle forward.
Lilith and Rafanel urge Hyksos to hurl the sack with the kobold prisoner at the zombies in order to distract them with a source of living food other than the heroes. But looking at the feverish gnawing of the zombies’ putrid mouths, and the vacant look in their mindless dead eyes, Hyksos cannot bring himself to do that even to his enemy. So instead he drops the sack with the kobold next to the outside of the large building, and rushes in with sword in hand and begins hacking at the zombies. Unfortunately, there are so many of them. Soon one female corpse embraces him in her grip, trying to hold him for the other corpses to tear Hyksos apart. Just then Tlaloc enters the fray. Trying to avoid getting swarmed himself by the zombies, Tlaloc hurls a dagger at the female zombie that grabbed Hyksos. He places the dagger expertly, causing the zombie to lose her grip on Hyksos and stumble back a couple of steps. Lozol hurls a couple of javelins at the zombies, until Hyksos urges him to join him in the fray. Lozol then draws his sword and charges in, glowing with divine energy as he challenges the toughest-looking zombie. Tlaloc then moves in to flank a zombie with Hyksos. Meanwhile, Rafanel continues to sink arrow after arrow into the zombies, while Lilith blasts one after another with her eldritch blasts of dark energy, and Xandir blasts groups of zombies with his spells, boosting the damage he inflicts by using his new magic wand, Orthrax.
Finally, the last of the zombies is hacked to bits so it cannot fight. Rafanel leads the others to gather the dead into the defiled shrine. He then pours oil on all the farmsteads, and sets them all on fire, hoping the cleansing flames will erase the horror of what was done in this place.
